The curious reason why Ivan Rakitic didn't train with Barça today

The Croatian had to record an advertisement and Valverde gave him permission to miss the afternoon session

Ivan Rakitic wasn't involved in FC Barcelona's afternoon training session. The Croatian did individual work in the morning and was later given permission to skip the afternoon activities completely. The reason behind his absence was to do with the ongoing situation in Catalunya.

Barça had originally scheduled one session for Thursday, in the morning, and Rakitic had made plans to travel to Madrid in the afternoon to record an advertisement. He was allowed to make the trip as the second session was originally scheduled for Friday afternoon.

However, due to the ongoing conflict in the city, Barcelona changed their plans as a general strike is set to take place on Friday. This forced the club to instead travel to Vitoria on Thursday ahead of the match against Eibar on Saturday.

Due to the late change of plan, Rakitic asked if he could still honour his commitment. Valverde said yes as long as he trained in the morning before later joining up with the team in Vitoria.